How to Dissect your Blog Writing Data to Find New Sub-Topics

How to Dissect your Blog Writing Data to Find New Sub-Topics

When you look at the analytics of your blog, you see what blog topics were the most popular for the day, week, month and even year. Many bloggers want to know how to capitalize on that data in order to continue to write engaging blogs that bring readers back again and again. It is difficult to predict what topics will be popular; however, you can use your current analytics to make a good assumption on what to write on next to continue to absorb readers.

Predictive Analytics

Researchers, including a team at MIT, are working on computer programs that will perform predictive analytics, but for the average blog, this will not be available any time soon. Predictive analytics analyze the current and historical data to then predict future events. However, there are a few tools you can use to create your own version of predictive analytics out of your basic program. First, you should ensure that you have reliable data that has a length of time to provide historical trends. Then, look at your data silo patterns, or the high and lows of traffic on your analytics, to see when a particular blog got more traffic. Together, these will help you predict trending topics.

Focus On The Topics

In order to decide what to write on next, you need to know what topics were successful. Your analytics will tell you which blog posts have the most interest. If you look at your top read and shared posts, then you will start to see a pattern emerge. This will inform you about your readership's preferences. Once you have an idea of the overarching topics that succeed on your blog, you can start to figure out sub-topics within that larger topic. You can look at the analytics of all the posts within that topic, especially the top ten to twenty posts, to see what they have in common. From there, you can see patterns emerge that will predict successful future sub-topics.

Look At The Timing Of Blogs

You data analytics will tell you not just what blog posts were popular, but also when. If you have noticed through the history of your analytics that a particular topic is more popular at a certain time, then you will want to write about that topic at that time. An obvious example is that blogs about the holidays will be more widely read in the holiday season than other seasons. However, when you scrutinize your data, you may notice that people prefer reading blogs about fitness at the beginning of the month, while later in the month they are more interested in financial matters. With this data, you can schedule your posts for the coming week and month to coincide with readership preferences.

Through using your analytics wisely, you can predict the topics you should write about in the future for your blog. You can even create an editorial calendar that follows historical trends on various sub-topics. You do not need to know much about reading analytics in order to see certain historical trends of readership on your individual blog posts. With a little analyzing, you can create your own version of predictive analytics that will paint your path for you.